Palo Alto Networks Inc.‘s announcement Tuesday of its intent to acquire CyberArk for $25 billion implies a heavy price tag, as its shares fell on the news. But I believe it to be a good, long-term strategic move for Palo Alto and a logical extension of its platformization strategy. Valuation is interesting to look at but highly overrated long-term. If an acquisition is a good one and helps transform a company, then the purchase price won’t matter over time. Consider the purchase of Mellanox Technologies Ltd. by Nvidia Corp., which was almost $7 billion in 2019.

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Analysis: Palo Alto Networks bolsters Its AI play with acquisition of CyberArk

Since launching its Generative AI Innovation Center in 2023, Amazon Web Services Inc. has had one primary goal: help customers turn the potential of artificial intelligence into real business value. Now, the company has invested an additional $100 million in the center to enable customers to pioneer the new wave of autonomous agentic AI systems. Post-announcement, I talked with Taimur Rashid, managing director of generative AI innovation and delivery, who oversees the center.

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AWS expands its Generative AI Innovation Center with $100M investment

The artificial intelligence sprint is on, and not just within companies: This race is being held at a geographic level as well. The Middle East has been very active with AI, as has India and, of course, the U.S. This week the Indonesian government is taking a major step toward establishing itself as an AI thought leader and achieving its sovereign AI goals by supporting the efforts of Nvidia Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and the Indonesian telecommunications leader Indosat to establish an AI Center of Excellence in the country.

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Indonesia to establish AI center of excellence with support from Nvidia, Cisco and Indosat

With all the hype around artificial intelligence, work should be easier and more efficient these days. But that’s far from the truth. Employees are still spending hours searching and sifting through information and second-guessing AI responses. Coveo Solutions Inc.‘s latest Employee Experience Relevance Report takes a closer look at how workplace tools are falling short on EX and why more companies need to have a better approach to knowledge discovery.

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Coveo report finds the employee interest in AI is high, but so is employee frustration

One of the major announcements at contact-center-as-a-service leader NiCE Ltd.‘s Interactions user event in Las Vegas last week was a partnership with Snowflake Inc., the cloud-based data warehousing company. This might seem like a strange partnership as typical partners for contact center vendors include customer relationship management companies, service firms and the like, but this addresses a huge customer pain point, which is management of data.

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NiCE-Snowflake partnership addresses a significant AI customer pain point